A hundred years ago, the young generation had ideals. They were united by an idea of a free India ruled, governed and led by Indians. They differed in their methods, so some professed non-violence while others violence; some wanted to free India through revolution while others through evolution. They achieved what they aimed for. In the last 100 years, the world has changed. It has seen the communist revolution in Russia and a revolution against it. The Berlin Wall has been erected and erased. The world has seen India come to being, India divided and now the emergence of India. Today, hundred years later, is the age of idealism dead? I believe that till the time the young breathe, they will not only dream the impossible, but also attempt to achieve it. We just have to believe. The difference between then and now may be that we are not as united in our ideals and idealism as our fathers and great grandfathers were. My idea of how their India needs to go ahead might be different from the idea that the MNS or Raj Thackeray might have, but we are all entitled to these ideals. I want to believe in an India where divisive politics comprehensively gives way to progressive politics, where there is no scope whatsoever for political debates centred around caste, religion and region. This is the change I want to bring. I want to believe in India which gives equal opportunity to each and every child to pursue a dream, to become what they want to and get what they want irrespective of their caste, family or religion.

There should be equal opportunity in politics too. I am here today because of my surname. I am a product of that system but that system needs to change. When I contested my first elections, nobody knew me. The only qualification I had was my family--great grandfather, grandfather, father--all of whom had been in politics for years. People elected me then but for the next term, I asked people not to vote for my surname, but only for my work. One person who has recognised it more than anybody else is Rahul Gandhi. He's the change that we want. He is willing to give youth equal opportunity. If they want to contribute towards nation building, they can become members of the Youth Congress, contest elections and if they get votes, they will be guaranteed full support. This is what I call a silent revolution. Today it's throwing up a new breed of young politicians. Politicise a new breed of politics and a new breed of leaders who are ready to lead our country to a bright future. The youth needs to remember that change can't wait for some other time and change can't wait for somebody else.

TANYA A. DUBASHEXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND PRESIDENT (MARKETING), GODREJ GROUP

I found it ironical that I have been asked to speak 10 minutes about a generation that lives on text messages and tweets with a 140-character limit. In Godrej, we have realigned ourselves to be highly consumer-centric so I would share with you a few ideas that are very relevant in this context. India's youth today is socially aware and more idealistic than its counterparts elsewhere, but I strongly believe that they are no longer are limited to the ideas that they have inherited from their parents. India today has changed; it is more progressive, brighter, it's a land of opportunity and along with these, the ideals of the youth have also evolved. The concept of idealism has changed. Earlier frugality, restraint, saving and concepts of minimalism were sort of prerequisites to being considered idealistic, but they are no longer important. To touch youth today, one needs to be contemporary and understand this new context they live in. I strongly feel that aspiration and affluence are in no sense idealism's enemies. Entrepreneurship that creates true wealth can be both inclusive and can be done with utter integrity. There is ample opportunity for any employee or any corporate to live and work with utmost integrity and be very successful doing just that. Even in an inclusive sense, it's complete. As a group, I believe that going forward is going to get easier and easier as India today has ample opportunity. In a broader sense, idealism is really critical for the effective working of a democracy. Cynicism and apathy really can't be tolerated as excuses for shrugging off personal responsibility to this cause. There is a great need, as Deepender pointed out, for more personal democratic participation, idealism and personal responsibility for the future. Our nation can be transformed if all of us would take responsibility for it. We need to ask ourselves if we can be the change we want to see. If we do so, we would be able to metamorphosise our nation. We should evaluate whether we see our existence as the product of our circumstance or whether we have the motivation to change the circumstance that we live in. If reality asks you to compromise on your ideals, it is time to recreate or renew reality rather than extinguish your ideals because it is only by adhering to your values and ideas that you can create real value.

'Idealism has today paved the way for reality'

RANBIR KAPOORACTOR

I represent youngistan, the youth of India. As part of this generation which believes in challenging conventions, I'd like to begin with challenging the topic itself. Why can't reality and idealism come together? Why can't idealism become reality? One of the few cynics thought that the young Indian cricket team would be slaughtered in the 2007 ICC World Twenty20 tournament. Young captain Mahinder Singh Dhoni won the World Cup in style and turned the wish of winning into reality. Had anyone imagined that a politician with Z-class security would leave the safety of his bulletproof car and roam freely on the streets? And all this just to prove a point. He's young and we all know who he is: Rahul Gandhi.

Closer to my profession, five years ago making films like Firaaq, Taare Zameen Par, DevD., or those that I have fortunately been a part of--Wake Up Sid, Rocket Singh: Salesman of The Year--was a big challenge. In Rocket Singh..., I was Rocket Singh who didn't have any grades to boast of. All that he had was optimism, vision and hard work. Idealistically, the world should have been kind to his vision, the bosses should have been his guiding angels, colleagues should have been welcoming comrades. In reality, he gets trapped in vicious circles of humiliation but manages to create an idealistic world for himself. Youngsters speak in a different language, 'no' for them means now, 'how' means somehow and that is the way of living which is simply 'wow'. Today, youngsters are not only living in an idealistic world but are even earning their living out of it. In my view, idea in idealism has paved way for real in reality. As a kid born in a family of accomplished actors, I used to dream of being taken seriously as an actor. That was idealism. Today, I have been given this opportunity to share the dais with some of the most esteemed celebrated dignitaries as Ranbir Kapoor, the actor. That is reality to me. Reality does merge with idealism.

'Small choices can make a difference and change things'

ASIN THOTTUMKALACTOR

My father said, "Anyone who is not a rebel before 35 and a rebel after the age of 35 is not a normal person". The youth today has a strong desire for change and that's how ideals are born. But as reality sets in and as life goes on, we tend to mellow down and comprise ideals for the sake of survival. This compromise, whether we do or not or to what extent, determines the change that we can bring about.

In the film industry, we find scores and scores of artistes, filmmakers, technicians and actors who start with new ideas but in an effort to gain a foothold here, lose it all. Here everything and everybody is a commodity, exactly replaceable by the next talented non-name. The jostle never ends. Actors and directors in general are criticised for being sellouts. People often watch films and wonder how could someone work on these films. But if one person refuses, then he or she will be replaced by the next commodity and the juggernaut will roll on. Mediocre products continue to be made because people are not willing to take risks. As an actor, it would mean lesser endorsements, lesser visibility, lesser media coverage and lesser so-called industry friends. But I think it is the only way to get soul into the business. Small choices that you make for that extra money, popularity or fame makes the difference. Selling values and integrity is never one clean sweep; it's a layered process. Everybody and not just the youth is capable of change. Small changes can make a difference in the society and bring about many bigger changes in the longterm. It is a sincere attempt at steering reality towards idealism for progress and development of the nation.

India has taught me that we are not just agents of change; we are also agents of connection. Actually, when I first came to India, I was 16. I found out the question that I really wanted to spend the rest of my life answering: why some countries are rich and others are poor? India is more than a country, more than its roads, cities, villages, even more than its sum of people. To me India is an idea and a really powerful idea. It invites contradiction, it celebrates clamour, discourse, diversity of life, curiosity. One of the things that it has taught me is that we can actually resurrect and remake ourselves over and again, become something new and get involved in different mediums and areas and have it all coexist.

India's youth cannot be giving up, they can't be disillusioned because that is quite frankly a cop-out. What's harder is to roll up your sleeves and figure out piece by piece how to make things better. Anything that has actually worked here hasn't been a magic bullet. It's just been small successes that have weaved themselves together. To me our country gets hit twice, first by low education levels and then by the missing presence of educated women in the workforce. That's not to say the women are not contributing. We all know that they are in many visible and all too many invisible majors, but I am a strong believer that educating adolescent girls and women can be at the heart of knocking a host of our development issues from population to health, to the environment.

If we can give young women the means, the skills and the confidence to change their own environments, we may actually strengthen the movement where people can find local solutions to development challenges much better than we can figure it out ourselves. So a large part of my motivation to move to India was to set the seeds for an institution that focuses on girls' education and leadership.

My hope for our generation is that we do well and we prosper. Not just accumulate more for ourselves, but to expand the opportunities for others. We have to lift as we climb. Harder than waiting until 2050--whatever arbitrary date in the future--is to tackle the hard questions which actually is what a lot of countries do. We can learn from the mistakes that others have made. We have to be up for the task while we are still young because it is now our watch.

'When you knowwhat you want to achieve,you can surely do it'

ADRIAN D' SOUZAHOCKEY PLAYER

I am an idealist for the mere fact that since I was eight or nine-years old, I always dreamt of being in the biggest event any sportsman could play, the Olympics. When I turned 20, I was there and that's one time when I realised that yes, I can make a difference. If I dream big, I can surely do it. But at the same time one has to be real. I also dreamt of winning medals, definitely winning the gold in the Olympics when I grew older. When I played for the Indian national team, I knew it's not easy. Being the goalkeeper of the national hockey team is not a piece of cake. But I know that someday, if I work harder, if we work harder as a team, we can achieve our goals. If I have to say something for the youth, it's very important to have an ideal mind because no matter what, but as long as you have the same thinking towards life and what you want to achieve in life, you can achieve whatever you want. I want to say this again and again that never ever give up because we live just once and it's important to be an idealist.

Q. Can you change the cancers in India's systems--of education, police, health--and with it the caste system?Deepender S. Hooda: The days of divisive politics in India are over. Governments are getting voted back in power because of governance, not because of caste or religion. In my first term, I contested and was elected. As a product of the system, I won by a margin of 2.25 lakh votes. I won the second election by a margin of 4.5 lakh votes from areas in my constituency where there was not even a single voter from my caste. I got elected. I am proud of it. I want to live with that hope.

Q. The Shiv Sena and MNS are big bullies. The ideal is that Bollywood should stand up as one but in reality many of you did not utter a single word in support of Shah Rukh Khan.Ranbir Kapoor: I don't think you need any vocalisation of support when you support someone. I faced a similar situation while releasing Wake Up Sid. We had used the word Bombay in the film a lot and so the MNS opposed it and asked us to use the word Mumbai instead. Yes, it is bullying. I don't know how it can be stopped. I am too small a person to stand up against such a big power... I don't think Shah Rukh Khan was bogged down or apologised to anybody. He was absolutely right in his belief.

Q. Do you ever feel that you should have chosen cricket and not hockey?Adrian D'Souza: I don't think I have made a mistake by taking up hockey. I love this game. I never played cricket in my school. Cricket is the most popular sport that everybody follows. I am sure many of you don't even know the eleven players of the Indian hockey team. We used to wonder why is it that we are treated this way? We discussed that we needed to fight against the system. Eventually, it turned into reality. We went on a strike for a day. There was a change and we could feel it. If we have unity and if we all want to achieve the same goal, we can turn idealism into reality.

Q. What are the two most important things to realise the idealism of having India in the top three economies of the world?Roopa Purushothaman: Education and infrastructure. We have this huge, young labour force, half the population under the age of 26, but not huge if it doesn't participate. If we kept our participation rights similar to what we have right now, by 2030, we are going to look more like Japan. We are just going to be supporting so many people who just don't work. We have got to figure out this way of extracting the government from being involved in every sort of aspect of trying to take care of things and not doing it all.

Q. What is it about the Indian business system that those who do not belong to legacies cannot rise?Tanya A. Dubash: Many of us, of age old family business learned how to work with the old system where there was rampant corruption. To succeed 30 years ago was far more difficult than it is today where there is a lot of opportunity to be idealistic, to grow with integrity. A slow cleaning up of the economic and political system will facilitate it.

Do You Like This Story? Awesome! Now share the story Too bad. Tell us what you didn't like in the comments